One of the cool features of Azure is the ability to have a “deployment slot” for your web app. Web app content and configurations elements can be swapped between two deployment slots, including the production slot. Deploying your application to a deployment slot has the following benefits: You can validate web app changes in a staging deployment slot before swapping it with the production slot. Deploying a web app to a slot first and swapping it into production ensures that all instances of the slot are warmed up before being swapped into production. This eliminates downtime when you deploy your…

BizSpark Plus just got a whole lot better. Starting on July 1st the current BizSpark Plus offering will increase from $60,000 for one year of Azure cloud services to $120,000. We are partnering with top accelerators across the country to get this in the hands of early stage startups. Techstars, ERA, Seedcamp, 1871 and MassChallenge are part of over a 100 in 47 countries that partnering with the program. These organizations are in the trenches, providing the marketing and business support that early stage companies need to be successful. The offer expands our existing BizSpark Plus program which, in addition to open…

Every year since 1963, the President of the United States has issued a proclamation announcing National Small Business Week, which recognizes the critical contributions of America’s entrepreneurs and small business owners. More than half of Americans either own or work for a small business, and they create about two out of every three new jobs in the U.S. each year. As part of National Small Business Week, the U.S. Small Business Administration takes the opportunity to highlight the impact of outstanding entrepreneurs, small business owners, and others from all 50 states and U.S. territories. Every day, they’re working to grow…

When you hear the words “Microsoft Cloud” or “Microsoft Azure” do you think of the Microsoft Stack? All apps running .NET and Microsoft Windows Server? It can be. But it does not have to be. Ranging from PHP Websites to full Linux VM’s, Azure has plenty for your business or startup. This is a round up of a few quick starts to get you up and running on Azure and using open source technologies. Step 1: CloudDev Camp To get going a good place to start is with the the CloudDev Camp. This is a few step learning plan that…

UConn Stamford Digital Media & Design Program presents: Microsoft – Game Design & Development Panel Discussion April 9th, 2015 Prospective students, applicants, or current majors in the DMD program, are invited to attend our Digital Media Career Series at UConn Stamford. Learn from industry professionals about the digital media careers and internship opportunities that exist right here in the New York metropolitan tri-state area. We encourage you to follow us on Facebook, which will allow you to see other event announcements and UConn Stamford DMD happening. To attend this event, you must RSVP to Katie Huntington (Kathryn.huntington@uconn.edu) and include ‘DMD Stamford Digital Media…

Join the virtual event to watch as Scott Guthrie announces an exciting new Microsoft Azure service for application developers. Learn what’s new and how you can build cloud scale web and mobile apps faster than ever before and with less code. Save The Date Spread the word…

In part one we did the setup. Part two we did the coding. Now we will continue some of the coding but also start looking at some configuration options.

Step 1: More Services

Lets finish up the rest of the services. We are basically mimicking what we just did for the Occasions API call for the Results and Details. If we look at the API we find the endpoint to get all drinks by occasion is /drinks/for/occasion_id. We have a route that mimics that /drinks/:filter/:id We can use this route, controller and service over and over again by changing the filter based on what we want returned. Continue reading Building Cross Platform Apps with Visual Studio – Part 3

Lets reset a bit on our project. We are starting to look at building an app that will be able to run on iOS, Android and Windows. There are a couple of ways to doing this, natively or cross platform approach. If we were to build a native app for 3 platforms we would have to code in 3 different languages and use 3 different IDE’s. (Not counting a tool like Xamarin). We are also looking at the multiple stack developer who has a lot of “web” knowledge. They know how to build web apps and their skills can translate well to this cross platform development. We will be using HTML and JavaScript to build this app. Most importantly, we will be using Visual Studio to create our cross platform app.

The app can be anything, but in this example it is a drink recipe app. Categories -> Results -> Details. That is the flow of our app. We will be using a theme from Bootstrap to make it look pretty and responsive for multiple screen sizes. AngularJS will be our JavaScript MVC Framework for the back-end. We left off with a basic “barebones” app structure that we will build upon.

If you don’t know it already, mobile apps are all the rage. From social networking to pictures and videos to gaming, the app ecosystem is where you want to be. But what if you are a “one-stack” developer? What if you only know HTML/JavaScript? What if your expertise lies in Web Development? Well, they all have their challenges but over the next few articles I will try to demystify the mobile development process especially when it comes to cross platform development. The “one-stack” developer has is a bit easier. They know what the hardware will be. They know the screen size and capabilities of the device. They can reuse code over and over again and create some high quality apps. The “multiple-stack” developer has an advantage as well. They know how to code for multiple platforms. They know what may or may not be possible for each of the platforms. Lets look at the “stacks” and define them a bit.